Hacker News Reader

Why can I not reply to the person below me?

Regardless, anyone could do this type of fabrication in their garage given removing the legal and technical barriers that keep EUV technology behind lock and key.

View on HN

What that guy is doing in his parents garage is not EUV lithography. He's doing what early IC manufacturers first accomplished in the 60s, only with the benefit of 50 added years of knowledge in the space and decades old equipment that never would have been affordable to the average tinkerer when this technology was cutting edge.

The idea that the risk of patent infringement is the only thing preventing him from building a chip comparable to a modern Intel or AMD CPU in his garage today is absurd.

That’s not actually true. Setting aside the fact that to build an EUV lithography system costs over one hundred million dollars (a single system ships from ASML in 40 shipping containers and has over 100,000 parts) [1], Sam Zeloof could legally build one tomorrow if he was able - he just wouldn’t be able to sell it unless he licensed patents.

1. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/10/asmls-high-na-euv-lithog...

Exactly. It's not like it's literal magic. It's just knowledge and resources, which should be getting more abundant and cheap, not scarce and expensive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com